The time we spend apart
by ThePunkHippie
Summary: What I think happened before the canon, this is basically me trying to make sense of certain things that are mentioned
1. Chapter 1

We must go our separate ways

I know the time-line is a bit wonky but I promise it's not much worse than the canon (shots fired)

Stein awkwardly stood in front of the door to the Death Room, he knocked on it and it opened almost immediately. He was too logical to be nervous, or that's what he kept telling himself as he walked through the hallway. Lord Death greeted him the same way he greeted everyone "Hi-ya! How are you doing? Good to see you!"

Stein who currently had no patience for this said "I'm going to cut to the chase, you know about the rumours that have circulating the school about me"

The Shinigami's voice suddenly got slightly lower as he said "Of course" then added with what seemed like a knowing smile "You're here to clear your name aren't you"

Stein shot a bit of a smile in return and said "Yes I have been cutting up Spirit but he's known about it for a while, and the two of us had been in a relationship for almost two years that has now ended" as his smile got more and more psychotic looking while he spoke.

The Death God treated it like he usually does so he went back to his cheerful voice and stated "Well! You're in a bit of a dilemma!"

Stein sighed quietly and said "It seems so, I'd like to ask a small favour from you"

Still cheerful as ever the answer was what he was expected "Sure! What's up?!"

Stein quietly told him "I'd like to take a test to prove that I know enough to graduate from here and then get a letter of recommendation from you to be sent to a University so I can become a Doctor"

Death said in reply "I'll agree to the first part, but I'll have to think about the second part" and somehow portrayed a polite smile through his giant mask.

Stein said in a slightly happier voice than before "Thank-you, I'm very grateful" then turned to walk out.

Stein knew he was a genius so of course he passed the test. This made Lord Death so happy the Shinigami became unbearable to be around. He wouldn't stop going on and on to the teachers about how Stein knew everything to graduate. Then, a few days later Stein just stood there awkwardly while his now former teachers looked at him with a mixture of shock and fright. Since they obviously had heard the bad rumours too, everyone around him had. So in front of all of them Shinigami-sama announced "The good news is that young meister Stein will be leaving for medical school ASAP!"

One of his old teachers was outraged and yelled "What! Why are you letting this happen, it's unfair?!"

Lord Death looked at all of them and said "Now, now, you should be happy for him. One of your students has done very well because of your teaching"

Stein kept his huge mostly fake smile as he thought 'it's not because of these assholes' but said "Yes, Lord Death I will always be grateful to you, whenever you need anything you can count on me"

Lord Death said even more cheerful than before "That's Fantastic!" then went back to normal as he said "Ok! Well everyone! That was a good talk!" and everyone slowly walked towards the door of the Death Room.

Spirit came to the apartment later that night and saw Stein packing up. They had a nice chat about his plans to go to London, and about the University he'd be going to. Spirit then asked "Are you sure you'll be okay living in London by yourself when you're so young?"

Stein then smiled and said "Yes, I will and I'll be living a dorm, so I won't technically be alone, not to mention It's my birthday soon"

Spirit then said cheerfully "I'll write to you every day!"

Stein looked at him like 'are you serious' and said "I doubt it, you don't have to, we'll both be busy"

He didn't know what he expected but laughter wasn't it. After the laughing though the reaction was "Well, maybe once a month then"

Stein gave Spirit another smile and said "I'll be looking forward to it" and started walking out.

Spirit yelled after him "Bye!" but didn't hear an answer.

Stein wasn't one for sight-seeing so he just got a cab to the university he was attending. When he got there people looked at him funny and not in the way he was used to. It made him proud that they weren't used to seeing people as young as him attending the university. He found the office where more people looked at him funny. At least the secretary tried her best not to look weird about it. He smiled to her in the polite way he only used when he wanted something. He then said "Hello, I'm Franken Stein but please call me Stein"

She then smiled back and said "Oh yes, I have your stuff around here somewhere" she then started looking through the files and tried to make small talk by asking "So, do you want to become a Doctor because of your name?"

Instead of getting angry from that question he put on another fake smile and said "Actually, I think my parents named me that because they wanted me to become a Doctor"

She then said "here it is" and pulled out a file that had his name on the side and started flipping through some papers in it she then looked up at him shocked and said "you're the guy who is here because of Lord Death himself"

He was getting tired of this and said "Yes, that's me" then asked "Can I have my dorm room number now?"

She said "Oh, yes of course" and she handed him a plastic bag with the school's logo on it, he assumed it had the information he needed to get settled. She then smiled at him again and said "You have a nice day"

He said in reply "Thank-you" but under his breath he said "glad that's over" and walked away.

Spirit tried to hide the fact that he was smoking and drinking more from Kami but it wasn't exactly working. (It was even more difficult to hide if from her when he cheated on her since they were living together so he didn't as much) He was glad that she assumed he was upset from finding out his roommate was even more of a lunatic than everyone thought so she didn't ask questions. It was actually because his roommate left him. Spirit really wished he could've gone with him, of course he couldn't tell anyone this. To make him feel better he wrote letters to Stein but since he was drunk while he wrote them they were terrible so he never sent them. He knew his drinking problem was getting out of hand when he woke up one morning to Kami being all excited and yelling "I can't believe we'll be fighting a witch today!"

He stumbled out of bed and said "Me neither" then the first thing he did was instead of his usual morning routine he decided it was important to finally write a legible letter to Stein, no matter how bad of headache he had, just glad he didn't also need to throw up.

_Stein_

_Sorry for not writing before this, I've been busy or drunk or both. It's been weird, to say the least Kami keeps yelling at me for being such a terrible roommate to live with or whatever. How did you manage with me for so long? Anyway I decided to finally get my act together and actually write to you because apparently I'm fighting a witch later today. I literally just found out. So maybe the next time I write to you I'll be a Death Scythe. How are you doing with the whole becoming a Doctor thing? I bet I'll win, unless you never come back for years, which knowing you, you might. Feel free to come back, I try to yell at Kami for you, but she is ridiculously good at the yelling back thing. Living with a guy is so much easier, you have no idea, though since you are a huge Gaylord you'll never feel my pain and let me tell you, you are one lucky bastard. Try to avoid living with women as much as possible. You would never believe the crazy things that are in our bathroom. I just assume that they're all poison she plans to use on me if I piss her off too much. At least with you I only had to fear being experimented on. Anyway, sorry again, this is much later than I had planned._

_Spirit_

It took him so long to write it that Kami actually noticed what he was doing even though he tried to hide it from her. He then jumped up tried to get dressed fast so she wouldn't notice he was gone. It didn't work but at least she didn't freak out like she would've if she didn't see him writing something earlier.

Stein's life at university was going good so far. Sure there were some assholes who said he didn't belong here but he shut them up by telling them he already graduated and is a two star meister because he was a genius. Pretty soon no-one bothered him, he didn't have any friends either but he was perfectly fine with that. Friends would've made it difficult to keep up with the day classes and the night classes he was taking. Because of this people were gossiping that he was an overachiever but in reality he just wanted something to do since he doesn't sleep much. It also made him very glad that he seemed to be a natural at keeping his homework organized.

The most interesting thing that happened here so far was when he read the soul of a girl who was reading in French. After that he found it easier to learn French than when he tried to before. He then put travel to learn languages on his to do list.

When he turned into a Death Scythe, it felt weird. He felt like his entire body was changing shape and expanding. After all that happened he still could hardly believe it.

Just a few days ago, Spirit was a regular weapon, now he was a Death Scythe, not just a Death Scythe either, The Death Scythe. When he first heard about his new job he started crying on and kissing what were probably the Shinigami's feet. Of course he didn't mention that part to Kami.

Time flew by very fast since Spirit was so excited about his new job. He was the personal weapon of Lord Death, he got paid lots of money for standing around, watching what was going on with the students fighting and making jokes. So when he came back to the apartment Kami was always mad at him for no reason except for the fact that he enjoyed his job so much there weren't words for it.

Then one day he came back and instead of hearing her being short with him, he heard crying coming from the bathroom. He put his stuff down, slowly walked there and opened the door delicately to see Kami sitting on the floor against the wall making the loud crying noise he heard earlier. He asked her "What's wrong" and instead of saying anything she just handed him a pregnancy test that read positive. She probably expected him to be upset too but instead he exclaimed "This is great!"

She finally spoke up to ask "How is this great?"

He sat down next to her and said "I've always wanted and liked kids, now we get to have one that's our very own to spoil and play with and all that fun stuff"

Kami started raising her voice at this asking "How are we supposed to take care of this kid?" she then told him "We don't have the money, not to mention the fact that we only live in a one bedroom apartment"

He jumped up and said "You keep forgetting that I have one of the best paying jobs in town now" then he added "We can move to a nicer, bigger apartment, one that's closer to the DWMA so I can walk to work!"

She started laughing at that and chimed in "Maybe one that's big enough to have a bedroom we can actually put stuff in that isn't ourselves and a bed!"

Spirit laughed with her and shouted "We can have an apartment so big we won't have to worry about constantly pissing off the neighbours!"

Kami got up and exclaimed "One that we can actually have people over in!" They spent the rest of the night dancing to music and happily making plans. Kami was still worried about the fact that she was pregnant but she would always be thankful to Spirit for cheering her up and helping her see that it wasn't all bad.

Note: I think Kami wouldn't be very happy to learn that she was pregnant, she was quite young after all. Also I think Lord Death would treat his students that really didn't have parents to take care of them like his kids occasionally.


	2. Life Happens

Chapter Two of Life Happens

It was almost the end of Stein's first year of university when one day he was sitting on his bed reading about syphilis when his mirror rang. He didn't think that a guy would be so freaked out that he would burst through his door while asking really loudly "What was that?!"

Stein just looked at him in a way that he hoped said 'are you kidding me' and actually said "Well let's find out" and answered it.

Lord Death's giant mask appeared taking up his entire mirror and if that wasn't interesting enough the annoying guy shrieked, fell over and hid in a corner. Death ignored that and started with his usual type of ridiculously cheery greeting "Hi-ya! How ya doing kiddo?!"

Stein rolled his eyes and said "I'm doing well, it's been such a long time since I last talked to you, and so I forgot what it was like"

The Death God either didn't catch the double meaning or just ignored it and said "I missed you too! Nice Stitches on your face, did you do them yourself?" 

Stein sighed and reluctantly said "Yes"

Death said "Well they look very nice! How's school?"

Stein looked away and said "I'm almost done my first year"

Death looked even more excited as he clapped his giant hands together and exclaimed "Well that's just wonderful!" Suddenly the Shinigami looked awkward which was something Stein had never seen him do previously. Especially when he looked down at the floor and asked "Would you mind coming back here when you're done with your first year?"

Stein was kind of shocked so he didn't say anything which made Death feel like he could start his spiel explaining that the only academy doctor had just died and they were having trouble finding a new one. Stein sighed and said "So you want me to be your doctor until you can find a new one"

The guy still sitting in the corner of Stein's room said "I think that's illegal"

As they were both ignoring him Death jumped up and down on the thing he used as feet then asked "So what do you say?" before Stein could respond he started trying to sweeten the deal "You'd get paid enough that could buy your own house in Death City, and you'd get to have your own office"

Stein knew he couldn't say 'no' so instead he said "I guess I could, just give me some time to get things ready"

The Shinigami jumped up and said "Well that's just perfect!"

That's how Stein became The DWMA's youngest doctor, even if it was just temporary.

When Spirit heard from Shinigami-sama that Stein was coming back he had mixed feelings. On one hand he was happy to see his best friend again, but he was also very scared of Kami's reaction. He knew he had to tell her anyway even though he really didn't want to. Turns out he was right to be worried since her response was to shriek "WHAT!" he knew that was rhetorical since she continued yelling "After everything that sociopath has done Lord Death is forcing him to come back and if that isn't bad enough, be around CHILDREN!"

Spirit curled up in a ball on the floor and explained "It's just temporarily, Shinigami-sama can't do anything else at the moment"

This just made her yell even louder though "How can you be ok with this?!" then she added on "And now you're sounding like a POLITICIAN!" She then grabbed her coat and left their apartment as quickly as she could slamming the door as she left.

Stein was glad he bought a house ahead of time before coming back to Death City, it cost a lot of money but he didn't care about that social construct. He was confident that he would be able to make it into something that was more his style. It was tall and looming, unfortunately it was also an ugly bright blue colour. He was ok with that for now, since he had only seen it before now in pictures. He walked into his new house and showed more excitement than he thought he would. He would never tell anyone that he ran around the house in excitement just looking at everything.

He usually slept for an hour or two each night, but he laid on his bed that only had a blanket on it thinking. Mainly about stuff he would normally find trivial. Stuff like how people would react, would he be a good Doctor, and how weird it was to be in Death City after leaving not too long ago, hoping to never come back. Then he turned his head from looking at his ceiling and saw the sunrise. He realized he wouldn't get any sleep that night at around five so he just got up and started to figure out how to use his new coffee maker.

Stein walked into the Death Room to see his professors from just last year be even more upset to see him. He expected this though and ignored them. Lord Death was always very welcoming though and used his regular excited voice to say "Welcome Doctor Stein!"

"I could get used to hearing that" was the only response he gave, and it was mainly to make everyone even more angry at him.

Death explained "I've told everyone that they are to call you Doctor Stein, I got it in engraved and everything!"

The new Doctor asked "Is there anything else I should know before going to the Dispensary?"

"Just that you have your own office and that you should watch out for Kami, she might try to kill you" that was said in a slightly less cheerful voice than before.

Stein tried to hide the huge psychotic smile on his face and failed so he just turned to leave and everyone assumed he wanted to see his new office.

When he got to the Dispensary he was surprised to see Spirit standing there. They just looked at each other for a few awkward seconds until Spirit said "I'm supposed to show you to your new office"

Stein said "Ok Death Scythe, lead the way"

Both of them ignored the fact that Spirit flinched when Stein called him that. So they continued the awkward silence as they walked towards a door in between a bed and a cabinet of medicine that had a plaque on it reading 'Doctor Stein'. Spirit said awkwardly "well here we are"

Stein looked at it and quietly chuckled saying "So he actually got it engraved"

Spirit asked "What?"

Stein quickly said "never mind" and then opened the door.

Much to Spirit's surprise, Stein actually looked happy when he saw the office and was smiling in a way that he hadn't seen since they were together. It made Spirit uneasy so to distract himself he jumped up onto the examining table and asked "could I use this to nap on sometime?"

Stein looked down at him and said in a slightly amused tone of voice "as long as you don't tell Lord Death about it"

Spirit changed the subject to ask "So how have you been this past year?"

The other man looked at him and said "You know what I've been doing while I was away"

Stein expected to have to continue with the boring small talk but instead he was grabbed by the collar of his lab coat and had his lips pressed to the other man's. He pulled away since even though he was enjoying it he didn't know how to react so he just asked "what was that for?"

Before Spirit could respond there was a knock on the door and then Nygus walked in. Both of them were expecting her to be shocked but instead you could see a smirk under the bandages on her face. Spirit quickly said "I was just showing him his new office"

She said "Yes, I can see that" she then said "I was the one working here while you weren't since I am great at bandaging people so now I'm going to be your nurse, want me to show you around"

Stein said "Yeah, sounds good, I've been busy so I haven't been able to look around much though" he then turned from Spirit and just left him there with Nygus so she could show him where most of the equipment was kept.

Later that day Stein was looking over some papers in his office when there was a knock at his door. He was surprised since, not many people wanted to visit the crazy new Doctor. He said "come in" anyway.

Spirit walked into the room and said "wow, you doing paperwork, never thought I'd live to see that"

"I only do paperwork when it interests me" was the response then after a short pause he asked "what brings you here?"

The other man responded "I wanted to ask you a question, what happened to make your face scarred like that?"

Stein explained with such a bored tone of voice that would sound out of place on anyone else while talking about such a serious topic "We were talking about the muscles in the face in a class and I wanted to see them for myself"

Spirit started getting protective even though the new Doctor didn't need it "You cut yourself open because you were curious! I thought you only did that to other people!"

That just made the younger man smile and say "Well Senpai I don't have you for that anymore, and I decided to use black thread on myself though because I like the way it looks , some people get tattoos, I get stitches"

Spirit started to feel uncomfortable so he looked at the clock on the wall and said "I have to leave, if Kami finds out the reason I'm later than normal is because I was talking to you, she'll skin both of us alive and make it into a baby blanket" after he said it he remembered that they didn't want him to know she was pregnant.

Stein ignored that and said instead "I think I'd like to see that happen"

Spirit just replied "Shut up" in a slightly playful tone of voice and walked out.

After everyone at the school figured out that he wasn't just there to cut them up, Stein was doing quite well as a Doctor. He handled putting up with the people who were scared of him better than he thought he was going to. Nygus' help was also valuable especially since everyone knew that she didn't put up with their nonsense made all the idiots shut up while he was working with them. So everything was going good until Azusa burst in the door and yelled "This is a farce!" everyone in the dispensary just looked at her as she continued to yell "He isn't a real Doctor yet!"

Marie rushed in the door after her and said "I'm sorry I didn't mean to tell her you were back"

Stein said while still in his usual bored tone of voice "No it's ok, nice to see you both again, but I am busy at the moment, maybe we could talk again some other time"

Everyone that was listening was shocked to hear someone talk to the bossy gun bow like that. But everyone around was more surprised when she didn't get mad, she only said "You better not dissect anyone unless it's important though"

He smirked and said "I'll try" and she turned on her heel to leave.

Marie was shocked as well but she was the fastest to regain composure and said "yeah, let's catch up sometime" she smiled at everyone and left, following her friend.


	3. Chapter 3

Life was going pretty well for Stein and Spirit except for a few small things. Spirit was being forced to quit smoking and Stein constantly smoking around him wasn't helping in any way so they had to compromise, Stein would smoke a bit less and Spirit would try not to yell at him.

One day Stein and Spirit were standing around, pretending to do important business when Sid burst into the dispensary holding a baby, of all things. The man working as a Doctor didn't think the academy was the proper place for a baby with all the fighting going on and asked "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Of course Spirit had to freak out like he normally would assume the worse, yelling at him "He couldn't just leave it to die!"

Stein couldn't help himself, he felt like he had to explain himself "I didn't mean he should just throw it away" he then realized why Spirit was acting like this "You're going to have a child of your own soon enough, aren't you, Senpai?"

The older man immediately changed from angry to awkwardly rolling from side to side on the floor making up incoherent excuses as to why he didn't tell Stein.

As the days went on, Stein found himself reluctantly helping care for the baby that Sid decided to name 'Black Star' because of his tattoo displaying his ancestry. The young Doctor regularly had to keep himself from manically laughing about the stupid name.

Then a few days later Stein was called to the Death Room to find Lord Death looking much more serious than he normally does. The Shinigami explained "We've found another Doctor" assuming him to be much more upset than he was.

Stein didn't know what to think about that so he just asked "Does that mean I can go back to university?"

The Lord of Death immediately cheered up, and replied "Yes! You can go back and learn about bones and organs to your heart's content!"

That brought a small crooked smile to the young man's face. Until he realizes that he would have to leave the life he built for himself in Death City. He even painted his entire house a grey colour that he liked. Eventually he decided to keep the house since he was hoping to return sometime in the future. After he went back and finished university.

One night Spirit was sleeping peacefully until Kami woke him up yelling "Wake up you ass!" quickly followed by "I think the baby's coming!"

He then fell out of the bed he was previously comfortable in and yelled "Oh shit!"

Spirit then took around fifteen minutes running around trying to get everything they needed together. Kami just laid there watching him freak out, unimpressed. Once he was finally was ready to get out the door she asked him "Didn't you say you got everything ready days ago?"

He ignored her to just get everything in the car. Nothing was said between them until Spirit helped Kami get into a wheelchair and pushed her to the front desk where he freaked out at the lady at the front desk "My fiancée is about to have a baby!"

The lady then looked at the two of them surprised to see the man excited and the woman, not as much. Usually it's the other way around. She then told them "A Doctor will be with you shortly"

This of all things was what made Kami snap, yelling "I don't want a Doctor shortly! I want a Doctor now!" not caring that she disturbed most of the people in the area.

Spirit was trying and failing to calm her down. She kept yelling until a secretary told them "right this way"

Around five hours later Spirit was able to hold his new daughter for the first time. As far as he was concerned, nothing he had seen until then could even compare to the beauty of his new born daughter. Quite awhile later Kami decided to name her Maka because it means both 'the favourite one' and 'earth'.

Then the next day he made Stein the godfather without telling Kami. He knew that she wouldn't even try to understand why he did it. Stein didn't know about it either. The scatterbrained man decided to explain if anyone asked that he forgot that his old Meister was a psychopath who was leaving for university in a few days.

Stein's reaction was pretty much the same as Spirit expected. He said "Oh" then took a drag on his cigarette and then asked "Why?"

Spirit then said "Well, you're the closest thing I have to a friend, except for Sid, but he doesn't count because he's a co-worker now"

The younger man's voice was kind of muffled as he spoke around the cigarette "That's kind of sad" then before Spirit could be offended he said "You do know I'm leaving in a few days, right?" The only response Spirit could muster up was some sputtering and wild hand gestures. To make himself sound even angrier Stein added on to that "Also, let's pretend that what we did when we were kids was just experimenting" then he dropped the butt of his cigarette on the floor of the hallway they were standing in, stomped on it angrily and walked away before Spirit could say anything.

Stein was only kind of regretting how he left things with Spirit. He tried to distract himself by working extra hard at his studies. Then one day a man who looked a year or two younger than him walked up to him and told him "I really like your stitches" without any annoying small talk and then asked "did you do them yourself?"

Since he wasn't sure how to react in this situation he just said "Yes" and started to walk to his dorm.

He turned around though when he was told "My name is Peter and your name is Franken"

Stein was impressed, simply because few things that could shock him and someone whose soul he hadn't even looked at knowing his first name was apparently one of them. He decided not to show it in his voice as he replied "just call me Stein" and then continued to walk away.

Peter ended up being one of the few people Stein talked to. They mostly about their studies since all they did together was sit in one of their dormitories silently reading textbooks and doing extra credit assignments they both found more enjoyable than their sane classmates.

As they got more comfortable with each other they started talking about other things. Stein told Peter about how he got the job working in Death City. Peter explained what made him realize he wanted to become a Pharmacologist (he couldn't decide if he wanted to become a Doctor or a Scientist). Then one day Stein was bored when they were sitting next to each other reading about ibuprofen and looked at the other man's soul. It made him ashamed that doing that was how he realized that the two of them were dating. He then got up and put his own face in between Peter's and the book he was reading. Peter's soul was sending off messages that said 'oh shit' but that all changed when Stein softly connected his lips to Peter's.

Stein said nothing as he backed away slowly to see the giant insane smile on the other man's face which he soon matched.


End file.
